Incurable romantic...

See me? See true romance? That's me all over, by the way. This is a day for lovers, so obviously, I took my partner up west.

Yep, today I and my beloved have spent St Val's at no fewer than three centres of medical excellence around Glasgow's leafy G11 and G12 areas: the epilepsy clinic at the Western ("you're fine, see you in six months, keep taking the Keppra"), then to Gartnavel to the Clinical Research Unit at the Beatson for bloods, and to the Tom Wheldon Building – effectively part of the Beatson – for the daily head-zapping.

Makes you pure poetic, so it does.

Blood samples are red,

Temozolomide's blue,

Except when it's green.

And it quite possibly comes in other colours too. I think it depends on the dose.

After weeks of dotting in and out of Gartnavel, with its huge campus and (mostly) shiny-shiny modern buildings, the Western is a bit of a come-down: scary traffic access, little parking, and a general sense of cramp and dilapidation. Which is why, I assume, they moved the Beatson up to Gartnavel.

There are some shiny buildings at Dumbarton Road, and some lovely old ones – not least the magnificent Maggie's Centre in the gatehouse, although I can't help feeling the double-helix statue out the back is rubbing it in a bit under the circumstances – but the poor wee epilepsy unit is stuck in a peeling wooden shed that wouldn't look out of place in war films. The people inside are exceptionally nice, informative and very professional, and you'd think the NHS could at some point stretch to having their hut painted.

Anyway, Clare and I are now back at the Beatson's CRU for the longer part of the day, which comprises the now-monthly double whammy of nippy-itchy intradermal jags I get into the same well-worn hole in my leg as part of my vaccine trial, followed by a four-hour sit-about just in case I go into anaphylactic shock. It isn't likely, but if I'm going to do it, it's much nicer to have medical emergencies in well-equipped, comfortable hospitals than most other places. Take it from someone who's done the full fally-jerky-cracky-ribsy thing in the office; this is a lot better.

So it's been a day of wine and roses throughout. Apart from the booze and flowers part, obviously, both of which are frowned on in hospitals these days.

And we did get to have a wee picnic, once I'd been bled, zapped and jabbed: bottle of something fizzy (water, sadly), king prawns, chicken legs, wee sausages, nice cheese. Quite pleasant, really, if you ignore the fact that it was all in the middle of a cancer ward.

Adding to that general sense of well-being is the knowledge that, after tomorrow and Thursday's sessions, I will have no more radiation blasted through my head ever again, and no more chemo to stomach for nearly five weeks.

I am being constantly warned that post-radiation tiredness will set in at some point; maybe immediately, maybe two or three weeks later. I'm already shattered for a period in the middle of the day, so I may already be experiencing it. It varies according to the individual, and there's no real way of knowing how it's going to hit.

But I'll deal with that as and when. I've been in one hospital or another almost every weekday since the beginning of December, and while I have always had the utmost respect for our health service, and that has only grown since this whole episode began, I'll be delighted to see the back of it for a while.

I'm not giving up on the fundraising, though; this little blog has so far generated in excess of £2500 for the Beatson (including gift aid and a generous bung from the Herald & Times Group Staff Benevolent Fund, which might not be showing in the total yet) and I'm keeping it going. The NHS supports treatment, but this money goes to research, development and extras for patients – the stuff that will keep saving lives and making them more bearable. They can't really get enough, so if you like the blog then show your appreciation to the Beatson on my JustGiving page.

Thanks.

Feeling light-headed

Baldy Bain, went to Spain…

The old playground rhyme goes.

In a chocolate aeroplane…

Not the most practical of modes of transport, but let's go with it for now.

When he got back, he broke his back…

I'm surprised he made it at all, what with the confectionary-based aircraft and everything.

And that was the end of Crackerjack.

Sadly, it wasn't. When this little ditty was the standard method of greeting a new haircut in a schoolchum, Crackerjack was still an institution with the firm hand of Michael Aspel on the reins, and five-to-five on a Friday remained something to look forward to. Had it ended there, it would be remembered fondly. Unfortunately, the full horror of the Stu Francis grape-abuse years were still to come, possibly part of the same national decline in standards which led to the Baldy Bain rhyme itself being abandoned in favour of simply chanting "baldy, baldy" and slapping the freshly-trimmed about the scalp until concussion set in.

If you didn't get any of that, it's because you're either too young or too old. So for those who aren't down with the memes of a 1970s primary education, the point is this…

My head's cold.

After a few days procrastination, last night I dug out the super-duper, 18-length, swivel-headed, cut-your-own hair clippers I bought at the weekend, set them to 5mm, handed them to Clare and asked her to get on with it.

The first pass wasn't massively successful. It was an improvement, insofar as it took away the patchy comb-over look I'd been cultivating, but it still looked a bit odd. The problem was that across the patches of scalp where the radiation has gone in and out, only the once-luxuriant, so-brown-it-was-nearly-black hair has leapt screaming from my head; the straggly insurgent greys have decided to hang around to see what's happening next, giving me a weirdly unbalanced look with a pretty stark line between my normal dark thatch and its thinned-down grey neighbour. Trimming this down to a half-centimetre had only really served to throw it into sharp relief.

I looked like a suede badger.

So we set the trimmers down to 1.5mm and had another go. I think this is better.

At this length, the grey isn't really visible, so the overall effect isn't any less medical than before, but at least it looks more alopecia than cancer, so I suppose that's a sort of an improvement. The only way from here is full cue-ball – or, in my case, bowling-ball – but I'm going to stick with the two-tone Dralon look for a bit, even if those tones appear to be black and invisible. It's been a long time since I've been under any delusion about being in any way pretty, so I can stick this for a few days to see what happens. I just have to remember not to wear my white Ben Sherman polo shirt, so I don't look like I've escaped from This Is England.

Thing is, I now have only five more radiation sessions to go, including tonight's. Next Thursday is my last, so it might all start to grow back after that, dark hairs and all. Even if it comes back grey, as long as it's of similar thickness to the rest, it'll be OK. Maybe even a bit exotic.

Meanwhile, there are pros and cons. On the downside, I still look a bit diseased, lying down is an oddly jaggy experience, and the leather sofa on which I like to conk out in the middle of the day is cold on my scalp. But on the upside, I'm sure I can now do some pretty inventive stuff with Fuzzy Felt.

And, now I think about the old rhyme, maybe I should go to Spain. Specifically, the Canaries, where it's nice and warm at this time of year. If I'm going to be gubbed and sleeping half the day for three weeks after the zapping stops, I can do that just as well on a sun lounger. It's a thought. Although I think I'll stick with a standard, low cocoa-solids way of flying there.

Hair we go, hair we go...

So I bought some hair clippers at the weekend. The radiotherapy-inspired hairloss is now starting to look a bit, well, medical; the time may have come.

The thing is, I'm getting quite close to the end of my treatment. Next Thursday is my last head-zapping, after which my hair may well start to grow back. So I'm a little reluctant to take the plunge.

Here's the scenario:

From the front - things don't look so bad, possibly because I have a freakishly large head which is hard to take in all at once from close up. My left side and top appear fine, my right side a bit oddly thin, like normal male-pattern baldness which has for some reason slipped a bit.

From the left - I look completely OK. I think there is a spot of thinning behind my left ear, truth be told; it's likely, since that's the way out for the cosmic rays which are beamed in from the right on a daily basis. But my hair was trimmed in there, anyway, to balance up the post-surgical regrowth on the right (read Hair today for the story of the full horror of that haircut), so it's not obvious.

From the right and from the back – all starting to look a bit like I'm an in-patient at Huntingdon Life Sciences, I'm afraid. No part is entirely bald, but it ranges from fluffy behind the ear to just a bit comb-over higher up. And the line is stark, from full-growth to straggling grey with no blending.

So the options are to leave it all well alone, go for some kind of all-over evening-off, or perhaps try something more exotic.

To be honest, I'm quite keen on the first. I'm old enough to be sufficiently lacking in vanity just to simply ignore it. However, I am starting to notice people's eyes drawn irresistibly to the uneven baldiness and the now very-visible operation scar, and I do like to pass anonymously. I can and do wear a hat when I'm out at the moment, but I hate wearing it indoors, even in shops, and I'm sick of having to empty it every time I go to put it on.

So, the second option, perhaps. Well, as I've said before, I have nothing against the Kojak look. But it only really works well when you're thin or black. I'm neither: in fact, as a bit of a natural chunky monkey recently enhanced by a steroid appetite, I have a vague worry I'll look like an Essex stereotype replete with cranial scarring and toast-rack neck. On the other hand, I love ska music and have some quite nice Ben Sherman gear and newish Doc Martins, so I could trim down to suedehead and go for that look. That might be interesting. Or life-threatening.

The third option? Well, I could shave in both sides for a bit of an Eighties indie thing, but I hated the pale wet tossers who did that back then, so why would I want to join their ranks 25 years after the event? I could go a step further and try the baby Mohawk but, again, it's a bit Eighties and old punks need to have an air of commitment I'm going to lack. 

And there is a more modern approach – I have noticed that the youthful aficionados of hippity-hoppity music are much taken to carving asymmetrical patterns and perhaps the tag of their favourite crew into their cropped crowning glory: I'm thinking something a bit like corn-circles, with the Radio Four logo on one side.

Think it'll work? All suggestions gratefully received.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day...

I've been off on the sick for two months now – yep, as of tomorrow it's a full sixth of a calendar since my skull was jemmied open and the lurking horror removed – and people keep asking me how I fill my days.

The answer is 'with very little'. But that seems to be working, which surprises no-one more than me.

Boredom, or the fear of it, is what had initially bothered me the most about having all this time on my hands. I find it all too easy to slip into that Sunday afternoon torpor Douglas Adams described as "the long, dark tea-time of the soul", where ennui and inertia combine into urrggh. I had a few months of unemployment nearly ten years ago which did me no good at all on that front – you start to get into pointless, time-consuming routines; you actually start to regard going to the shop or signing on as What You're Doing That Day – and I was a bit worried about being sucked back into that.

But back then I was completely healthy, just unoccupied, and frustrated because a complicated mortgage insurance policy was stopping me from doing casual work, and my attempts to get back into the meedja full-time seemed to be constantly met with accusations of being either over-qualified or out of touch because I'd spent so long working in that dead-end, flash-in-the-pan online thing. Seriously, people actually told me that. Not a good time, for me or the industry.

This is different. I am, in a sense, still healthy insofar as I have no side-effects from my actual condition, or the hole it has left behind. But there are effects from the treatment, and they take a kind of a toll.

If I fill my time with little jobs like this blog, reading, and messing about with domestic tech projects, I toddle along fine and keep well away from the sucking mire of daytime TV. But I'm also aware that my energy lasts for about two hours at a stint before I have to eat and sleep, and that if I make the mistake of standing about in the cold or doing something strenuous, I'm going to be a bit gubbed.

Most days, first thing, I feel perfectly capable of going in to work. It's just that while I can sit here on my couch and batter away at my laptop, then nod off for a bit, that sort of behaviour doesn't go well in an open-plan office. Anyway, I still have daily hospital appointments, with the attendant public transport crawl across the city because the DVLA won't let me drive while I've got a bit of brain missing, and that's tiring in itself.

So the days fill themselves up satisfyingly with a pattern of pottering, sleeping and going to hospital, to the extent that I've breezed past the half-way mark in my treatment, at least this phase of it, without much drag at all. Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself?

It all seems to be going as expected, too, which is nice.

My platelet count is stable, I'm pleased to say, because that tends to drop on this chemo and I'm very keen on not doing any more bleeding than is absolutely necessary. People do seem to want quite a lot of my blood on a fairly regular basis just now, and it's nice to know I can still close up again without all that messy spurting.

I'm losing even more hair, though, which is rubbish. I mentioned in my last entry that the patch I had only just regrown post-surgery had decided it was giving up on its comeback tour of the side of my head, but the rest of my right side is now also succumbing to musical differences. Annoyingly, it seems to be the black ones which are bailing out first; the greys are hanging on in there with the grim determination of a busload of pensioners in heavy traffic – a little extra memento mori, like I needed another one.

I have just over two weeks of daily chemo and five-days-a-week head-zapping to get through, plus three more Tuesday blood-lettings including an itchy vaccine-trial jag lined up romantically for Valentine's Day, then I get a break from all things hospital-y until mid-March.

I'm told I can expect to be thoroughly knackered for a couple of weeks after the death-rays stop, and that it might not be immediately afterwards – apparently there's a cumulative effect of the radiation that can kick in straight away or some time later, which I'm trying not to think of in terms of cooking. But, all going well, I hope to be back at the typeface from early March. There will still be a need to pop in to feed the Beatson's in-house vampire and occasionally go on a week of adjuvant chemo (which I should be able to work through), and there will be scans. But life should be back to more-or-less normal.

Until then, this is all really quite bearable. I'm feeling generally pretty good.

If you enjoy this blog, please consider donating some money to The Beatson, Glasgow's cutting-edge non-surgical cancer treatment centre. I'd be delighted if every reader gave £1 – you can do this very easily by texting MKBY91 £1 to 70070 from any UK mobile network. If you'd like to give more you can change the amount or use the blue puff to the top left of www.puregns.co.uk which links to my JustGiving page. That also works for readers outside the UK.

Hair today...

Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the barber's – the asymmetrical haircut is back.

I spent most of December with a baldy bit behind by right ear thanks to the spot of light brain surgery I underwent on the first day of advent. It grew back quite quickly, but the rest of it insisted on racing ahead, leaving me looking weirdly unbalanced. Moreso than usual, I mean.

Problem was that having someone gouge a hole in the side of my head, however skilfully, had left me more than a tad sensitive about letting anyone anywhere near the wound. In nerve-twanging, get-off-or-I'll-kill-you-where-you-stand kind of a way. Suddenly everyone wanted to dispense Christmas hugs on that side and, frankly, it was giving me the screams.

So professional hairdressery was out of the question. Once the bald patch had grown back a bit I did shorten off the left side a little with some beard clippers I've owned since a best-forgotten goatee project, but it left the top piled oddly high and fluffy and creepily reminiscent of an even better-forgotten Eighties adventure in coiffurey. Still, it was cold, I could wear a hat. Then I only looked like a stalker.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I decided I was starting to frighten shop assistants and the wound was now touchable enough for me to seek professional help. I even decided to forgo my ten-minute, ten-quid usual and go to a proper hairdresser with clean floors and sharp scissors and stuff. My thinking was that in the comfort of a well-lit, tidy salon with trained trimmers I could explain that I was only six weeks past a head operation and was still undergoing radiotherapy, and that they would need to be very, very careful and ideally not touch my scar at all. The hairdresser listened very attentively, agreed that none of this would be a problem, then passed me off to a girl of about 12 who proceeded to scald my scalp and scrub it down with highly perfumed Swarfega before passing me back to her older colleague who spent the next half-hour prodding my wound with a variety of instruments I can only imagine were last popular among inquisitive clergymen in mediaeval Spain, before charging me £22 for much the same haircut I always have.

I felt really, really sick, and not just about the £22 (men seem to understand this, women don't seem to get why that's a problem) and went home to sip gingerly at a glass of water and try not to vomit. This was my last goodish day before the episode I described in the last blog entry which led to me being put back on steroids (still going great, thanks for asking) so that may not have been entirely to do with the haircut. But it was bloody horrible.

And now, just under a fortnight later, my patch of thatch is falling out again, in exactly the same place as was shaved before because that's where they're shining the daily death-rays. I'm told I might also go a bit thin on top, because they're also beaming some radiation in that way, just for luck (actually, it's because they direct in multiple, weak beams which converge on the naughty spot to deliver a combined payload there but cause less damage along their own individual paths rather than just one, powerful beam which would cauterise everything along its route: it's a good thing).

Still, at least I've been told it probably won't go all patchy, so with a bit of luck I won't have to shave my head entirely. I have no problem with the Kojak look, it's just that what with my operation scar and another one dating back to a bizarre drinking incident circa 1990 involving a hanging basket in a pub, it might just leave me looking like I've recently escaped from a vivisectionist.

And it might become symmetrical, again. The beams have to come out somewhere, and their point of egress of choice is the exact same space on the other side of my head, so I may end up with a shaved at both sides look, another back-to-the-Eighties do.

Apparently that's fashionable again. Who's willing to join me on the cutting edge?

If you enjoy this blog, please consider donating some money to The Beatson, Glasgow's cutting-edge non-surgical cancer treatment centre. I'd be delighted if every reader gave £1 – you can do this very easily by texting MKBY91 £1 to 70070 from any UK mobile network. If you'd like to give more you can change the amount or use the blue puff to the top left of this article, linked to my JustGiving page, which also works for readers outside the UK.

The joy of Dex

This has been a period of weird ups and downs.

I'm now into the second full week of my treatment, and I'm starting to feel it, with days where I feel completely washed out and quite sick. I knew to expect this – nausea is the main side-effect of Temozolomide, my particular flavour of chemo, and although it is controlled with anti-emetics I was moved to milder ones after day five, so I anticipated a certain queasiness –  but I hadn't anticipated such an impact. The nausea has been mild, but it ruins my concentration and leaves me oddly devoid of ideas. And that is buggering up my day, to be frank.

Last week, for instance, I started writing a blog entry about what is offensive these days; starting with my own propensity for cancer jokes, pulling in some recent remarks made by Frankie Boyle, making a brief visit to Chris Rock as portrayed in the American Office, and ending up on the Scottish Government's shiny new anti-sectarian legislation. I thought through my argument, did my research, sorted out my links and… couldn't bring it together. It just wasn't working. Sure, I could physically write the piece, but I realised as I was going that there was nothing compelling in it, nothing interesting, funny or hmmm-worthy. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn't make it gel on the page. And it was because I felt sick – although not terribly, I've frankly had worse hangovers – and it was throwing my mind all over the place.

This was quite disturbing. You have to realise that I can normally churn out 1000 publishable words in just over an hour, slightly more if they’re also to sing. And I've done it through colds, flu, food poisoning, and (you may remember) from my hospital bed six hours or so after brain surgery. So this was a bit like having a hand off but not noticing until you go to use it. Still, writer's block happens, I supposed, so I put the piece aside and went to bed.

The next day, I felt worse. The day after, fine. Saturday, I felt crap in the morning then perfectly OK in the evening. On Sunday I felt terrific. Then yesterday I felt absolutely bloody awful: fine in the morning, but sick and tired from lunchtime, and by the time I got back from my late-afternoon cranial zapping I was shattered – sick, headachey, and unable to regulate my own body temperature; sitting in a warm room in a heavy jersey, under a blanket, hugging a hot water bottle and with a heat-pack at my back, and still shivering. I assumed I'd caught flu, probably from hanging about in hospitals – why do they let all these sick people in? – and went to bed when I felt warm enough to move.

And then, this morning, I felt fine again. Not flu then. Not the chemo, either, as it turns out: I reported my symptoms during my weekly guinea pig session at The Beatson's clinical research unit, and apparently this is the accumulated effect of radiation therapy. My brain's swelling.

So I'm back on the steroids once more, my old chum Dexamethasone. I had it in the weeks around my surgery, you may remember, and it's great. Sorted out some bruised ribs, too, as a welcome side-effect to keeping my brain smaller than my skull.

A less welcome side-effect is that I have to watch the booze a bit, since the combination burns great holes in the stomach-lining; but since I feel immeasurably better, I really don't care. Anyway I get Losec for that, so that's the chronic acid indigestion I've had for the best part of 20 years and which no-one medical I have ever met has seemed inclined to treat or even investigate, sorted for the duration as an added plus.

I received the sacrament of one small white pill this afternoon with the benediction that it would make me feel better "almost instantly" and, while I wasn't actually feeling particularly unwell, I did. Still do.

Ah, Dex. Dexy, Dexy, Dex-Dex. Pal. Welcome back.

It seems pathetic to be happy about just feeling normal, but I suppose this is what addicts must feel when they have their first morning dose of whatever it is that for them staves off the shakes, sickness and spiders. It's just a huge sense of relief.

Dex is also addictive and has a spectacularly gory range of side-effects. So I can't be on it for long. But, for now, it's great.

If you enjoy this blog, please consider donating some money to The Beatson, Glasgow's cutting-edge non-surgical cancer treatment centre. I'd be delighted if every reader gave £1 – you can do this very easily by texting MKBY91 £1 to 70070 from any UK mobile network. If you'd like to give more you can change the amount or use the blue puff to the top left of this article, linked to to my JustGiving page, which also works for readers outside the UK.

Day after day, they take some brain away...

Every day and in every way, I'm getting thicker and thicker…

Well, OK, not every way. But since the radiation therapy I started today may affect short-term memory and some higher cognitive function, I suppose it's otherwise true.

It's a trade-off. I take the radiation therapy, and it stops the glioblastoma from growing a new head, ideally for years. And since the un-radiated tumour would have the same effect, with a side-order of death, taking it is a no-brainer. Or at least a reduced brainer.

It shouldn't affect my understanding of anything. I don't expect to be any less quick on the uptake. But there could be some loss of short-term memory, and people with jobs which involve a lot of complex organisation (so not me, then) can experience difficulty they didn't previously. And it can affect short-term memory. Did I mention that?

If there is an effect, apparently those close to me are more likely to notice than I am. Which reminds me of the part in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the mice want to buy Arthur's brain and provide him with a simple electronic replacement.

"Who'd notice the difference?" asks Zaphod.

"I would!" Arthur responds, indignantly.

"No you wouldn't, you'd be programmed not to."

Of course, it may not happen at all, or it may not happen for months or even years. But since I've consoled myself through life thus far that whatever else goes awry, at least I'm smarter than the average bear, even the possibility is not encouraging news. It's perhaps the one thing that worries me more than anything else in this whole business.

Still, on the bright side, I have been told that, while there is no specific method for this, I can try exercising my brain as the organ has a certain plasticity which allows it to re-route functions it needs around areas which no longer work. Kind of a use-it-or-lose-it scenario.

This had occurred to me already, and I have spent idle moments in the last few days trying to mentally count the Fibonacci series (each number is the sum of its two predecessors, so 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13… and, yes, I do realise how geeky that is) but it seems that just doing the stuff I do anyway – reading rather than sitting watching the X Factor, for instance – will be sufficient. I think I'll start doing puzzles, too. Maybe even see if they've got these otherwise totally pointless brain trainer games in the Android market.

Ideally, of course, I would like to be counting the total on my JustGiving page, which I'm sure many of you will already be aware of thanks to the pretty blue puff to the left of this article and all the shameless spamming I did over the weekend.

It's to raise funds for the Beatson, where I am receiving all this wonderful if frightening treatment, and I'm delighted to say there was more than £100 donated on the first day.

New Year's Day wasn't so impressive, though, although the figure has crept up to just under £200 at time of writing, so if you haven't forked out yet, please do so.

All you need to do is click the puff, and you can make a donation on the JustGiving page by credit card or PayPal. If you're really lazy, you can even make your donation by mobile phone – just text MKBY91 plus the amount to 70070.

In fact, I think that would be the ideal – if everyone who comes to this blog donates just £1 by text each time they visit, the Beatson could get in excess of £100 per post from this blog ( I suspect this only works in the UK, though, so international readers will need to click the blue puff and use PayPal).

It would be nice if that happened. So if you like what you read, please show your appreciation by chipping in to an incredibly good cause. And keep me counting.